A more accurate subtitle for Ken Auletta's "Googled" might have been "the end of advertising and media distribution as we know it," which indicates thA more accurate subtitle for Ken Auletta's "Googled" might have been "the end of advertising and media distribution as we know it," which indicates the less ambitious scope and not particularly sexy subject matter of his 2009 book.

Auletta, a regular contributor on the media business for The New Yorker, spends most of these pages examining how that Google Inc has in a matter of years, like a "wave" crashing into shoreline buildings, disrupted the business models of media giants. This includes multimedia empires like Viacom, CBS, and News Corp, advertising firms like WPP, book publishers (who balked when the company sought to scan, without paying royalties, every book ever published), as well as the entire print journalism industry, who, already beleaugured by falling subscriptions and the loss of classified advertising revenue, saw Google News siphon off much of their online readership.

Google's battle with these players comes down to a high-stakes competition for the eyeballs of millions of media consumers, worth billions of dollars in advertising revenue. It's common knowledge that Google makes more than 90% of its revenue from advertising, and accordingly much of this book is about ads. It starts with Google, after floundering for a couple of years with dismal revenue, finally solving its revenue problem after figuring out an elegant way to integrate ads into the search experience (AdWords) and on the sidebars of millions of "partner websites" (AdSense), all without turning users off.

With its famous search algorithm ("PageRank," named for its inventor, co-founder Larry Page) and an effective advertising model in place, the company was soon raking in billions in revenue, and expanding globally with over 10,000 employees in 40+ offices around the country. Because by the late 2000s, media consumers increasingly spent their time online, Google found itself the main portal through which they found what they were looking for--instant answers to any vexing question, but also books, movies, music, and TV. Big media companies were slow to realize what an advantage Google's preeminence in search gave them in becoming a new kind of media giant. Their wake-up call, says Auletta, only came when Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, instantly giving them a major distribution platform for movies, TV and music.

The media companies joined forces to launch rival services including Hulu and Joost....more